Ceramic materials are inorganic, non-metallic materials compounded from a metal and a non-metal. Solid and inert, known ceramic materials tend to be stiff, brittle, strong in compression, weak in shearing and tension, chemically inert, and non-conductors of heat and electricity, but their properties vary widely. Ceramic materials generally can withstand very high temperatures such as temperatures that range from 1,000° C. to 1,600° C. Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite, but modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include aluminum oxide, silicon carbide and tungsten carbide. Currently, many different ceramic materials are now used in domestic, industrial and building products.
Ceramic materials may be crystalline or partly crystalline and are formed by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. For example, crystalline ceramic materials can be made by either making the ceramic material in the desired shape by reaction or by forming the ceramic material in a desired shape and then sintering to form a solid body. Non-crystalline ceramics, being glasses, tend to be formed from melts. The glass is shaped when either fully molten, by casting, or when in a state of taffy-like viscosity, by methods such as blowing to a mold. If later heat-treatments cause this glass to become partly crystalline, the resulting material is known as a glass-ceramic.
Due to the requirement of heat action, the currently available ceramic materials are limited in the type of additional components that can be incorporated or otherwise embedded within the ceramic material. For example, components whose physical or functional attributes are heat-susceptible are currently not able to be incorporated or otherwise embedded within the ceramic material. As such, there is need to develop a ceramic material that can be produced without the action of heat.